


Cinder Rain

by MercuryAlice



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Altered Mental States, M/M, Violence, brain washing, winter soldier!Bard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-29
Updated: 2015-01-29
Packaged: 2018-03-09 14:08:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3252647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryAlice/pseuds/MercuryAlice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eyes open, and it all becomes dust again, raining down in delicate cinders that catch on his lashes in a blackened mockery of snow.</p><p>He is-- called up. </p><p>He is-- tasked.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Troubled water

A child king reigned in Dale. A child king with little idea how to rule and who was far more interested in finding his father than official affairs. The Elvenking couldn't fault him that, frankly. Crowns are far too heavy for the young. He would know. That particular phrase echoed in his head, in the same delivery as it had been delivered to him so long ago. 'Crowns are too heavy for the young' Galadriel had opined, once.

He agreed.

In polar opposite of the new child king, the king of the woodland realm had ruled more than long enough for the crown to sit easy. Though he called Bard an ally, mortals were quick to perish and he was certain by now that the Dragonslayer had most certainly met with with death. It was unfortunate but such was the fate of mortals.

Despite its over-young ruler, Dale flourished as a trade city; largely due to the Lady Sigrid ruling from the shadows if he had to hazard a guess. Whether child or not, it made little difference to him.

In the interest of being polite and deigning to answer the letter asking his presence- not often granted, but relations with the city could one day prove in his interest- Thranduil arrived in Dale with a standard, if slightly numerous, guard; the summer sun unmolested by cloud and casting warm light upon his flowered crown. After all, who was he to deny audience with a king he could wield against Dáin if necessary?

Rather than act as he knew the Dwarrow would- with blatant highlight on the king's age, for certain- Thranduil's head inclined in deference and he greeted Bain the way he would a grown ruler. "King Bain of Dale." The address was cool but delivered in such a way as it could not be mistaken for condescension. "Lady Sigrid." There was another, he knew, but not present. His head lifted again with a slow blink. 

It was not lost on him, the fleeting look for permission that the boy-king gave his elder sibling. As expected, it was clearly the elder who truly held the reins. For now, that was information placed in a box away in his head to be exploited later. "My deepest condolences." He added a half beat later, if for nothing else than to judge the reaction it would glean. 

And a reaction it was, indeed. The boy's chin lifted and an expression of petulant anger flashed across his face in the moment before his sister shifted slightly and he remembered himself. "My father is not dead." The boy says, eyes sparking and jaw set.

Thranduil silently disagrees.

~

The self consolations rise up above him, like blackened bits of paper, glowing at the edges and spinning on the updraft rising from the space where memory should be. He was a baker, the scent of cinnamon clinging to his skin and years of habit etched into every movement. Or perhaps he was a bird, tumbling over and under tunnels of wind in a precarious show of falling only to sweep back on wing as steadily as a wheel spun.

He was something, and nothing. A comma between words. A breath between dreary comment on the weather. 

Up, up, and up the possibilities rise up; vanishing again like smoke curling up glass. One is replaced by another, on and on, and he believes none of them. The pretty ideas skate across the thin film of ice that spreads out in crystal spider webs in his head.

He is.

He is.

He is-- what?

A chisel, spun deftly on fingers; ready to chip away at otherwise stubborn surface. 

A cog, turning in time with its brothers and sisters; an ill-repaid yet essential part of a greater machine that was ever wound and ever turning.

Eyes open, and it all becomes dust again, raining down in delicate cinders that catch on his lashes in a blackened mockery of snow.

He is-- called up. 

He is-- tasked.

The fantasies of origins are lost to him, as they have been time and time again. Burned away and the ground salted until next time. It makes him blink once, twice, and then even that slips away. He is looked through and found worthy. Found necessary.

They are replaced with images he has no recognition of. Light pushing its way through leaves as one would part a crowd, painting a stripe of gold over the fallen flora debris almost reverently. A cavernous hive of a city, twisted trunks and branches reaching out only to be trodden on as so much dirt.

A vain and shadowed creature on a throne, crown throwing off glittering shards of light against every surface with every movement. 

He sees himself. A bow and quiver strung to his back, and an insidious dagger at his hip that feels heavy enough to drag him down through the soft ground. 

He does not sink. 

An arrow through the vain creature's throat.

Blood like a quiet pool, enough to drown but to look at it.

It is a comforting vision. A purpose. Not a baker or bird, for those are forever lost, but a calling. The thing stares with blind eyes. The vision ends.

Outside, it snows. Small, unimportant flakes brush his skin unheeded. Those who are called need not heed the cold for they are chosen.


	2. A break in the weather

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winter comes on swift wing.

The wind slices through him, cold and edged and bitter; for a moment making him feel almost two-dimensional as it seems to push through him as easily as a rock through wet paper. 

He does not know that an unnatural winter ties itself to his heels to be tugged along with every step. He only knows it is cold. Each night is greeted by tendrils of permafrost curling across the dingy rock underfoot, and each morning the knotted black metal of his arm is embraced by ice that shatters apart delicately as he viciously shakes it free; the hateful scent of cold twisted through his hair. It's a metallic taste in his mouth that makes his teeth ache. 

With ugly, braying laughs, his dark companions revel in it. Between guttural snarls, they mockingly call him the Winter Soldier; bearing their teeth, crooked and streaked with blood. He pays them as much mind as he pays the gravel that crunches beneath his feet. They do not matter. 

Behind him, dark, broiling clouds gather. Seeming begrudging of being leashed to his step rather than free to coat the world in freezing needles of rain and snow. They know no different, but as they overtake the sun, he feels as if they watch him maliciously; snarling at the bit and dragging him further in their impatience.

At his side, the sharp, jagged metal of his fingers roll as if a coin is travelled smoothly over. Somewhere in his head he hears each clink as it goes, though when he looks there is no coin. Only frigid air. The sound bounces around his skull long after his hand stills. 

It's days and days of rock turning to grass that gains a coat of frost, days upon days upon days that feel timeless but for the chatter from his escort. Ahead of him, the clouds slip their leash in earnest, rolling onwards until the sky is painted pitch. The horizon becoming a bleak smudge. He decides he likes it better like that.

His feet stop just shy of lapping water, and as ice digs its claws in from the edge inwards, he sees himself for the first time. A removed interest takes hold, and he stares down; head canted and blinking down at red, blank eyes as if they belong to something else. He barely registers raising his artificial hand to match the sharp tips to the deep gashes from brow to chin. He has no memory of it, but his hand mirrors the action; sweeping down his face and following the scars before falling away again as the ice turns an insidious deep green, obscuring the image. 

He thinks on it not at all. The thought drowns with cinder blocks fastened, to the depths of his mind. 

His boots crunch on the ice. One foot in front of the other, he follows the river without a care for harm to himself. The surface beneath his feet would be true. If not, he would swim. It didn't matter.

On and on, the full fury of an unwelcome season turning his breath to white puffs of tiny cloud from his mouth.

~

To them it had been abrupt, but to him it had been a progression. First his crown wilted, flowers giving way to a sleek silver hue that was not fitting at that moment. Second the clouds gathering over a place he could hardly bear to look at, too far for mortal eyes but easily distinguished by his own. The snap cold did not come unexpectedly to Thranduil. That did nothing to dissuade his concern.

Knowing something approached meant little when one had no idea what it truly meant. 

The Elvenking could easily have left to seek the almost conscious comfort of his wood, but given the choice of ignorance and safety or knowledge and danger, the latter won by a slim margin. If nothing else, he meant to know his enemy before it tapped knuckle on his doors. 

His fickle crown retired in favor of war circlet, he watched from high in Dale as the waters froze at the height of summer; casting a critical eye on the newly falling snow that dogged its heels. 

"It's snowing." The young voice comes unexpectedly, so deep in apprehensive thought was he. 

His head tilts enough to arch a brow at the youngest of the Dragonslayer's kin, opting not to rebuke the obviousness of the statement from one so unspeakably young. "It is." He says instead, neutral.

Tilda's gaze is impossibly guileless to him. So much so that it is very nearly an ache. "Did you make it snow?"

"No." Would that he had. Then, at least, he could know its meaning. Without a fleck of humor belied in his tone, he adds: "Did you?"

The answering laugh surprises him and he almost blinks. Almost. "I told Sigrid you were funny, she didn't believe me." She chirps, unconcerned with the gravity of the weather, as children were wont to be. Something in him shutters at that moment, like a door slamming shut; without his control.

Thranduil's eyes slide back to the window and he gives no answer but for a terrible blankness settling into his features like water settling to stillness. After a few beats, light footsteps retreat. He exhales, a hiss of breath like air escaping a pipe through a fissure. 

He waits.


End file.
